Gill Burgess
Abstract below..
Lancaster University Management
School is characterised by a very diverse student population, including a high
proportion of international students, and a wide range of programmes, some of
them consortial in nature. Students
often work across disciplines, and written assessments include a wide range of
genres, presenting challenges for students at every stage of their academic
journey.
The Academic Writing Zone, a peer
writing mentoring scheme, was piloted in 2011 - 2012 in the School as a result
of a review of faculty-based academic support provision.
The aim was to provide opportunities for undergraduates
in the School to discuss academic writing issues on a one-to-one basis with trained
student writing mentors– in other words, to set up a small-scale version of a
writing centre. We hoped that mentees
would benefit from interaction with more experienced academic writers, while
mentors would benefit from reflecting more explicitly on the writing process and
by developing valuable personal and employability skills. The mentors (final
year and postgraduate students) were recruited from both the Management School
and the Linguistics department in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The
training of the team of mentors and the operation of the scheme reflected a
view of academic writing development based on the concept of literacy as social
practice.
The pilot scheme operated for 5 hours per week,
mainly in terms 1 and 2, providing around 300 consultations for students.
The presentation will report on: our experience
on the pilot scheme - the background to the scheme, the way it has operated, and
the benefits and challenges it has brought; the changes to the scheme in its
second iteration in 2012 – 2013; and our hopes for the future development of
the scheme.
Key words: mentoring;
peer learning; academic literacy
Related references
Lea, M. & Street, B. (1998). "Student Writing in higher
Education: an academic literacies approach". Studies in Higher
Education, Vol 23, No 2.
O’Neill P, Harrington K, and
Bakhshi S ‘Training Peer Tutors in Writing: a pragmatic,
research-based approach’ Zeitschrift-schreiben [http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/Beitraege/o'neill_Training_Peer_Tutors.pdf]
accessed June 12th 2012
Ryan L &
Zimmerelli, L (2010). The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors 5E Boston and New York:
Bedford/St Martin’s.
Yeats R, Reddy P, Wheeler A, Senior C, & Murray J (2010) ‘What a difference a writing
centre makes: a small scale study, Education
+ Training, Vol. 52 Iss: 6/7, pp.499 – 507
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